crewdawg

Not very often. It's almost always within a few %. It's likely someone really screwed up because they gave nearly every category an extra X-day when they likely didn't have to do so. I'm guessing the above poster is right, they may have forgotten about vacation credit going up. I'm happy about the extra X-day, but not so excited about how far off they were. I'd rather have a line if I had known reserves would be so low. Oh well, the extra X-day was nice.



PWA 12.M.5. It's one of the worst parts of our contract because noone is truly protected from coverage on reserve, even the number one reserve bidder. It should be addressed, but not enough people realize how crappy it is, so it gets lost in the mix.



LOL we need a, set condition total reserves > X% esle start next.

hammer189

We actually have an option that is somewhat like that. Max reserves above.

MedStudent2021

They do have this, but the problem is that it doesn't really help when the company is so far off on their projections, like Crewdawg said. For example, in my category I know about 35-40 people above me typically bid reserve, and this number is pretty consistent throughout the year. Delta projected 80 reserves in my category for next month, and the actual number ended up being 61. When I bid reserve I was expecting to be around 50%, and instead ended up about 67%. I didn't really get the days off I wanted. I understand I could've protected my self against this using something like "prefer off weekends minimum X else start next bid," but when I've been in the top half of reserves in the past I've been quite successful getting the schedule I want.

hammer189

Fair point. We r the best of the worst!

Scoop

As far as bidding incompetence goes - you guys are all rookies. I took bidding incompetence to a new level this month, and without the help of faulty staffing calcualtions . If there was a Darwin award for bidding, I would have won it hands down this month. Amazingly my schedule turned out pretty good.

I go back and forth between reserve and a line. For April I intended on bidding a reserve line so all I did was list the days off that I wanted. Well somehow I started Pairing bid group vice Reserve bid group and never noticed it. All I did was ask for certain days off with no trip parameters or request in at all. Somehow I ended up with some of the best trips and mid week flying.

Oh well - lesson learned - Double check that Bid group!

Scoop

Extenda

are you me? This is the EXACT thing I did for April. Managed to swap and drop and get an ok line.

crewdawg

While that can be an OK tool, it wouldn't have don't anything to help me in this scenario. There really isn't much that could help when you're working with bad data.



We've all done something similar at times. The list of things I QC before my final submission continues to grow lol. Glad it worked out ok. I can't remember if this is the case, but I think PBS assumes you want holidays off and weekends off. There could be more, but I'm not certain.

Buck Rogers

It will do that if you have No bid in at all. Most people at least have a standing bid in to protect them in the event of no bid. But ....if one really botches it up and doesn't put in a bid and has no standing bid then PBS will do as you say regarding holidays and weekends.

hockeypilot44

I got burnt with a 5 day carry-out trip taking me into first weekend of May. Had avoid carry-outs greater than 0, then did a forget bid at very end. I didn’t think my bid would get that low. It did and of course gives me a trip that goes 3 days into next bid period. At least I have to wait until April 20th to try and get rid of it (sigh). I’ve been burned by carry-outs numerous times over the years and I’m still getting it wrong. For me, whenever I forget to limit it, I always get worst case scenario.

My biggest bidding mistake of all times was awarding trips before 8 am instead of after. I got my greater/lesser sign switched. Amazing that it was able to give me all un-commutable trips. Apparently those go junior.

Of course there’s those who forget to bid outright. That usually happens when on vacation or a long stretch of days off during the bid window when not thinking about work. Those guys are my heroes. They literally shut work out of lives completely.

crewdawg

Forget and forget/redo (now gone), are bids that if you're not sure of what you're doing, can really screw up a bid. To some extent, you're doing exactly what denial mode would do for you. But I get why some use it. Another case of something similar is the guys who use 200 bid lines with CSSN. They're just doing the work of denial mode for maximum control.





If they were real heroes, they'd have default bid in so they don't screw themselves the following month. I get shutting out work, but it's something we have to do every single month of our careers, I'm not sure how you forget about that...especially when it has such a direct impact on your QOL.